January 2010

January was a busy month filled with more snow, friends and good food. Because of the weather, snow, ice and such both Raquel's school and Mike's work were cancelled often in January which gave us plenty of time to spend together. We have been working with Raquel on learning to spell her name and now she is a pro and can also write my name and Mike's with a little help.

Raquel's first attempt to spell her name by herself.

On the 8th Mike took a trip up to Lynchburg to say goodbye to some of his National Guard unit that was deployed to Iraq. We are still very thankful that he didn't have to go with them this time since he hadn't even been home a month when they left.

The battalion took a few pictures at the D-day Memorial before heading to Mississippi.

We were planning on hosting a Turkish exchange student, Berfun from March until June. She had stayed with us for a few days while her current host family was out of town over Christmas. The girls and I had done quite a bit with her while Mike was gone and Raquel absolutely adored her and was so excited to have a big sister come stay for a while. Berfun had been very home sick and had thought about leaving to go home before Christmas but decided to stay. Then mid January we got a call saying that she had a ticket to go home. So we went out to celebrate with her at Zeppoli's. Poor Raquel was so tired that she fell asleep before dinner and didn't get to say goodbye. Berfun did give Raquel a beautiful bracelet to remember her by.

Finally in January it warmed up a bit so that we could take a walk to the park and play. We brought Raquel's friend Autumn. It was nice to get out of the house and enjoy warm weather. Little did we know that it would be the last time for a while and we would soon be snowed in for a couple of weeks.

Running to the park!

This month we also tried a lot of new restaurants and we were kind of on an Asian kick. We tried the Thai place in town which left us wanting our yummy place in Boise. Then we took our neighbors Ann & Wes to the Korean restaurant Kalbee in Pembroke which was good food but not authentic Korean that Mike was use to and finally we ate at Kabuki to celebrate Mike's partners birthday. We both loved the food but came home extremely stuffed. We had a good food month!

Lastly we had a fun visit with cousins. Anna, Lexi and Marilyn came to visit and play and ended up coming the day before a major snow storm and so we were stuck inside most of the time because of the cold weather but the girls had lots of fun playing with each other.